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THE TASK -4 



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BY 

William Cowper, 



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^^^ NEW YORK: 

Effingham Maynard & Co., 

SUCCESSORS TO 

Clark & Matnard, Publishers, 

771 Broadway Am) 67 & 69 Ninth St. 

1890. 



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KELLOGG'S EDITIONS. 

SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS. 

Bacb iplag (n One Volume. 

Text Carefully Expurgated for Use in Mixed Classes. 

With Portrait^ Notes, Introduction to STidkespeare's Grammar, 

Examination Papers^ and Plan of Study. 

(selected.) 

By BRAINEED KELLOGG, A.M., 

Professor of the English Language and Literature in the Brooklyn Polytechnic 

Institute, and author of a ''''Text-Book on Rhetoric,^'' a "Text-Book on 

English Literature,'''' and one of the authors of Beed <& 

Kellogg'' s " Lessons in English." 



The notes have been especially prepared and selected, to meet the 
requirements of School and College Students, from editions by emi- 
nent English scholars. 

We are confident that teachers who examine these editions will pro- 
nounce them better adapted to the wants of the class-room than any 
others published. These are tlie only American Editions 
of these Plays that have been carefully expurgated 
for use in mixed classes. 

Printed from large type, attractively bound in cloth, and sold at 
nearly one half the price of other School Editions of Shakespeare. 

The following Plays, each in one mlume, are now ready : 



MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

JULIUS Ci^ESAR. 

MACBETH. 

TEMPEST. 

HAMLET. 

KING HENRY V. 

KING LEAR. 



KING HENRY IV., Part I. 

KING HENRY VIII. 

AS YOU LIKE IT. 

KING RICHARD III. 

A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S 

DREAM. 
A WINTER'S TALE, 



Mailing price, 30 cents per copy. Special Price to Teachers. 



Full Descriptive Catalogue sent on application. 



ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES— No. 89. 



THE TASK 



Book II.— THE TIME-PIECE. 



ALSO INCLUDING, IN PART, 

Book VI.— THE WINTER WALK AT NOON. 



BY 

WILLIAM COWPER. 



^ttj^ finttolructors autr JEvplanatov^ ^otcs. 



MAV 5 1890 

NEW YORK: 

Effingham Maynard & Co., Publishers, 

771 Broadway and 67 & 69 Ninth Street. 



A Complete course in the Study of English. 



Spelling, Language, Grammar, Composition, Literature. 

Reed's Word Lessons — A Complete Speller. 

Reed &. Kellogg's Graded Lessons in English. 
Reed &. Kellogg's Higher Lessons in English. 
Kellogg's Text-Book on Rhetoric. 

Kellogg's Text-Book on English Literature. 



In the preparation of this series the authors have had one object 
clearly in view — to so develop the study of the English language as to 
present a complete, progressive course, from the Spelling-Book to the 
study of English Literature. The troublesome contradictions which 
arise in using books arranged by different authors on these subjects, 
and which require much time for explanation in the school-room, will 
>be avoided by the use of the above " Complete Course." 

Teachers are earnestly invited to examine these books. 

Effingham Maynard & Co., Publishers, 

771 Broadway, New York. 



Copyright, 1890, by 
EFFINGHAM MAYNARD & CO. 



INTRODUCTION. 



William CowrER, born iu 1731, was the son of the Rev. 
John Cowper, Rector of the parish of Great Berkhamstead, 
Hertfordshire; his mother was of the same family as the poet 
John Donne. The father, it wonld seem, exercised little in- 
fluence upon his life ; the mother died when he was only 
six years old, and forty-seven years afterwards, on receiving 
her picture from a friend, he paid to her memory the ten- 
derest tribute of affection to be found in literature. 

Soon after this event he was sent to a boarding-school, 
where his life was made miserable by the cruel tyranny of 
his companions. At ten he entered Westminster School, 
and there spent seven years in comparative happiness. 
Though extremely sensitive and diffident, he became a 
good cricketer and foot-ball player, and acquired some fame 
as a scholar. Among his companions here were Churchill, 
the poet, and the celebrated Warren Hastings. At eigh- 
teen he was entered at the Middle Temple, but law- 
books had little attraction for hira, and he spent the most 
of his time in mild dissipation ; enjoying " the intimate 
friendship of Edward Thurlow, the future lord chancellor, 
and the delightful companionship of his two cousins, Theo- 
dora Cowper, whom he would have married but for the re- 
fusal of his uncle's consent, and Harriet, who in after 5^ears 
was the " Lady Hesketh" of his charming correspondence. 

For several years Cowper led the life of a briefless bar- 
rister, viewing with increasing alarm the diminution of his 
slender patrimony. Gradually signs appeared of the mala- 
dy that darkened his whole Jife, fits of depression and 
melancholy, which finally deepened into madness. In 
1763 his uncle obtained for him an appointment to a clerk- 

3 



4 INTilODUCTIO:N'. 

ship in the House of Lords ; but an examination was re- 
quired at the bar of the House, and the strain upon his deli- 
cate nervous system involved in the preparation for this or- 
deal resulted in insanity and an attempt to commit suicide. 
He was partially restored by tender treatment in an asylum 
at St. Albans, but his intellectual powers seemed now to be 
hopelessly shattered, and he withdrew from active life, — 
" a stricken deer that left the herd." His relatives, secur- 
ing to him a small annual allowance, provided the remedial 
seclusion of a country home. At first he settled at Hunt- 
ingdon, in the family of the Rev. Morley Unwin, whose 
wife was henceforth to be to him " as a mother." Upon 
the death of Mr. Unwin, in 1767, the famil}'- removed to 
Olney, which was the poet's home for nineteen years. 
Here he became a close friend and companion of the Rev, 
John Newton, whose rigid Calvinism and austere prac- 
tices were undoubtedly injurious in their effects upon the 
poet's weak and susceptible nature. Several times the old 
malady returned, attended by fits of religious melancholy 
and despair. 

Cowper's life at Olney must be read in the "Task," 
which is a poetical transcript of his daily thoughts and oc- 
cupations, and in the "Letters," which are the most perfect 
specimens of epistolary composition that we possess. His 
natural temperament was bright and joyous, and the beauty 
and delight that he found in simple things constituted a 
new revelation in poetry. Though his thoughts, " for the 
most part," as he says, " are clad in sober livery," a light 
and wholesome humor always plays like gentle sunshine 
through the gloom that shadows his genius. ' ' My gold- 
leaf is tarnished," he says, "by the vapors that are ever 
brooding over my mind." While " John Gilpin's Ride " is 
the jolliest poem in the language, "The Castaway" is the 
saddest. To understand his personality aright, one must 
read the exquisite prose descriptions of his daily compan- 
ions, his tame hares and goldfinches, his garden with its beds 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

of gniss-pinks aud mii^nouette, and liis " workshop, " the 
liltlo grceuhoLise, Irellised with myrllesaud overhung with 
apple-blossoms; aud above all, the woods aud fields about 
Olney, and the " slow-wiudiug Ouse," which furnished the 
many pictures that he loved so well aud paiuted so beauti- 
fully in the "Task." lu a letter he exclaims: "Oh, I 
could spend whole days aud moonlight nights in feeding 
upon a lovely prospect ! My eyes drink the rivers as they 
flow." 

Cowper tells us that he was " a dabbler in rhymes" at 
the age of fourteen. During his London residence he 
wrote occasional essays for periodicals and love poems for 
his cousin Theodora. In the first year at Olney he wrote, 
in conjunction with Newton, the " Olney Hymns," among 
which are the old favorites, " God moves in a mysterious 
way," "Oh, for a closer walk with God," and " There is 
a fountain filled with blood." But it was his protecting 
genius, Mrs. Unwin, who really introduced him to the 
world. Being urged by her to write, as a means of divert- 
ing his mind, and finding increasing delight in the new 
occupation, he produced " The Progress of Error," "Ex- 
postulation," " Retirement," and other long didactic poems. 
These were published in 1782, but attracted little attention. 
But another valued friend. Lady Austin, introduced him 
to fame. She had already given him the story for " John 
Gilpin," and was begging him to attempt something really 
worthy of his genius in the blank verse of Milton, when 
one day he answered : "I will if you will give me a sub- 
ject." "Oh, you can write on any subject," said she, 
"write upon this sofa." Hence arose the " Task," imposed 
by *' the Fair," which began in mock heroics, and grew 
into a noble poem of six books that gave to the timid 
recluse of Olney the position of first poet of the century. 

In 1786 Cowper removed to Weston, one mile from 
Olney, where he completed an excellent translation of 
Homer. His last years were filled with agony. Mrs. 



6 IIs^TKODUCTIOK. 

Unwin died in 1796, after a long illness, tlirougli which he 
bad attended her with loving devotion. The shock reduced 
him to a state of hopeless despondency, and three years 
and a half later he was buried by her side. 



" Cowper, in many respects, is the Milton of private 
lif e. ' ' — Sainte-Beum. 

"We read Cowper, not for his passion or for his ideas, 
but for his love of nature and his faithful rendering of her 
beauty ; for his truth of portraiture, for his humor, for his 
pathos ; for the refined honesty of his style, for the melan- 
choly interest of his life, and for the simplicity and the 
loveliness of his character." — Ward's English Poets. 

" He has been called the best of our descriptive poets for 
every-day wear, the familiar companion of every quiet 
English household. But though the ' Task ' is full of 
scenery, it is not purely, or even mainly, descriptive 
poetry. ' More than its rural character is its deep, tender, 
universal human-heartedness. Man and his interests are 
paramount, as paramount as in Pope or any other city 
poet. Only it is not the conventional, not the surface 
part of man, but that which is permanent in him and uni- 
versal."— Pro/. /. C. SJiairp. 

"He does not seem to dream that he is being listened 
to ; he only speaks to himself. He does not dwell on his 
ideas, as the classical writers do, to set them in relief, and 
make them stand out by repetitions and antitheses ; he 
marks his sensation, and that is all. Thought, which in 
others was congealed and rigid, becomes here mobile and 
fluent ; the rectilinear verse grows flexible ; the noble 
vocabulary widens its scope to let in vulgar words of con- 
versation and life. At length, poetry has again become 
life-like ; we no longer listen to words, but we feel emo- 
tions ; it is no longer an author, but a man who speaks,"— 
Taine's English Literature. 



COWPER, 



THE TASK. BOOK 11. 
THE TIME-PIECE* 

Argument. 

Reflections suggested by the conclusion of the former book. 
Peace among the nations I'ecommended, on the ground of their com- 
mon fellowship in sorrow. Prodigies enumerated. Sicilian Earth- 
quakes. Man rendered obnoxious to these calamities by sin. God 
the agent in them. The philosophy that stops at secondary causes 
reproved. Our own late miscarriages accounted for. Satirical no- 
tice taken of our trips to Fontainebleau. But the pulpit, not satire, 
the proper engine of reformation. The Reverend Advertiser of en- 
graved sermons. Petit-maitre parson. The good preacher. Picture 
of a theatrical clerical coxcomb. Story-tellers and jesters in the pul- 
pit reproved. Apostrophe to popular applause. Retailers of ancient 
philosophy expostulated with. Sum of the whole matter. Effects of 
sacerdotal mismanagement on the laity. Their folly and extrava- 
gance. The mischiefs of profusion. Profusion itself, with all its con- 
sequent evils, ascribed, as to its principal cause, to the want of disci- 
pline in the universities. 

O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness, 
Some boundless contiguity of shade, 
Where rumor of oppression and deceit, 
Of unsuccessful or successful war. 
Might never reach me more. My ear is pained, 5 

* The idea of the title is more simply expressed by the phrase 
"Signs of the Times." In a letter to his friend Newton, Cowper ex- 
plains it thus: " The book to which it belongs is intended to strike 
the hour that gives notice of approaching judgment." 

1. Compare Jeremiah ix. 2. 

2. This fine imitative line recalls Shakespeare's "multitudinous 
sea incarnadine.'"'' Such effects can only be produced by aid of the 
polysyllabled Latin. The skillful adaptation of language and rhythm 
to the loftiness of thought, ia this noble introduction, is especially 
jjoteworthy. 

7 



8 THE TASK. 

My soul is sick with every day's report 

Of wroug and outrage with which earth is tilled. 

There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart, 

It does not feel for man. The natural bond 

Of brotherhood is severed as the flax, 10 

That falls asunder at the touch of fire. 

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin 

Not colored like his own, and having power 

To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause 

Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey. 15 

Lands intersected by a narrow frith 

Abhor each other. Mountains interposed 

Make enemies of nations who had else 

Like kindred drops been mingled into one. 

Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys; 20 

And worse than all, and most to be deplored. 

As human nature's broadest, foulest blot. 

Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat 

With stripes, that mercy, with a bleeding heart, 

Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast. 25 

Then what is man? And what man, seeing this 

And having human feelings, does not blush. 

And hang his head, to think himself a man? 

I would not have a slave to till my ground, 

To carry me, to fan me while 1 sleep, 30 

And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth 

That sinews bought and sold have ever earned. 

Ko: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's 

Just estimation prized above all price, 

I had much rather be myself the slave, 35 



8. Compare Ezekiel xxxvi. 26. 

15. Devotes.— Strictly, to devote is to consecrate as by a vow; 
hence to sacrifice or to consign to some harm or evil. So in 1. 20. 

35. Cowper was not afraid of the so-called solecism had rather, 
which, in spite of the granimariaus, lias been "good English" singe 
Chaucer. 



THE TASK. y 

And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him. 
AVe have no slaves at home:— then why abroad? 
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave 
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed. 
Slaves cannot breathe in England : if their lungs 40 

Receive our air, that moment they are free; 
They touch our country, and their shackles fall. 
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud 
And jealous of the blessing. S{>read it then 
And let it circulate through every vein 45 

Of all your empire; that where Britain's power 
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too. 
Sure there is need of social intercourse. 
Benevolence, and peace, and mutual aid, 
Between the nations, in a world that seems 50 

To toll the death bell of its own decease, 
And by the voice of all its elements 
To preach the general doom. When were the winds 
Let slip with such a warrant to destroy? 
When did the waves so haughtily o'erleap 55 

Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry? 
Fires from beneath, and meteors from above 



36. Cowper expressed his horror of slavery in three short poems: 
"The Negro's Complaint," "Pity for Poor Africans," and "The 
Morning Dream."" 

40. The judicial decision that " slaves cannot breathe in England " 
was given by Lord Mansfield, June 22, 1772, in the case of Somerset, 
a slave turned adrift by his master on account of ill-health, who, on 
restoration to health through the charity of Mr. Granville Sharp, suc- 
cessfully resisted the attempt of his brutal owner to reclaim him. In 
1786, England was employing 130 slave-ships, carrying 42,000 slaves. 
In 1787, the Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade was 
founded by Mr. Sharp, William Wilberforce, and others. In 1807 the 
slave trade was abolished by act of parliament. Slavery itself was 
abolished in the colonies in 1834, at a cost to the nation of twenty 
million pounds. 

5:3. To preach tlie general dooija.—" Alluding to the late calam- 
ities in Jamaica." — Covper^s note. Violent and destructive hurri- 
canes swept over Jamaica in the years 1780-86. 

57. Meteors from above.— " August 18, 1783."— Coit^per's note. 
This meteor is thus described in Mason's Notes : " It consisted of two 
brilliant balls of fire, of the apparent diameter of about two feet, side 
by side, followed by a train of eight others of smaller dimensions. 



10 THE TASK. 

Portentous, unexampled, unexplained, 

Have kindled beacons in the skies : and the old 

And crazy earth has had her shaking fits 60 

More frequent, and foregone her usual rest. 

Is it a time to wrangle, when the props 

And pillars of our planet seem to fail. 

And Nature, with a dim and sickly eye, 

To wait the close of all? But grant her end 65 

More distant, and that prophecy demands 

A longer respite, unaccomplished yet; 

Still they are frowning signals, and bespeak 

Displeasure in his breast who smites the earth 

Or heals it, makes it languish or rejoice, 70 

And 'tis but seemly, that where all deserve 

And stand exposed by common peccancy 

To what no few have felt, there should be peace. 

And brethren in calamity should love. 

Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now 75 

Lie scattered where the shapely column stood. 
Her palaces are dust. In all her streets 
The voice of singing and the sprightly chord 
Are silent. Revelry, and dance, and show, 
Suffer a syncope and solemn pause, 80 

The interva,ls between the balls were filled up by a luminous sub- 
stance of irregular shape, and the whole was terminated by a blaze 
of light." 

62. Compare Job ix. 6. 

64. And nature.— "Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe 
and Asia during the whole summer of 1783.^'— Coivper's note. 

68. Frowning signals. — Cowper expressed only the prevailing 
belief of the puritanism of his time in regarding the disturbances of 
nature as direct ^lanifestations of God's wrath. Physical science had 
not yet cleared away the superstition that befogged even the most 
intelligent minds. 

72. Peccancy.— Sinfulness; Lat. peccare, to sin. All are united 
by a common bond of sin. See 1. 1.55. 

75-132. The earthquake in Sicily here described occurred in 1782. 
Messina was utterly destroyed and the larger portion of the inhab- 
itants perished, with them the aged prince who " with half his peo- 
ple" put to sea, hoping thus to escape. 

78. Compare Isaiah xxiv. 8. 

79. Syncope.— A medical term, used here with questionable taste; 
a fainting fit, hence any sudden pause or cessation. 



THE TASK. 11 

While God performs, upon the trembling stage 

Of his own works, his dreadful part aloue. 

How does the earth receive him ?— with what signs 

Of gratulatiou and delight, her king ? 

Pours she not all her choicest fruits abroad, 85 

Her sweetest flowers, her aromatic gums, 

Disclosing Paradise where'er he treads? 

She quakes at his approach. Her hollow womb. 

Conceiving thunders, through a thousand deeps 

And fiery caverns, roars beneath his foot. 90 

The hills move lightly, and the mountains smoke. 

For he has touched them. From the extremest point 

Of elevation down into the abyss. 

His wrath is busy, and his frown is felt. 

The rocks fall headlong, and the valleys rise, 95 

The rivers die into offensive pools, 

And, charged with putrid verdure, breathe a gross 

And mortal nuisance into all the air. 

What solid was, by transformation strange, 

Grows fluid; and the fixed and rooted earth, 100 

Tormented into billows, heaves and swells, 

Or with vertiginous and hideous whirl 

Sucks down its prey insatiable. Immense 

The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs 

And agonies of human and of brute 105 

Multitudes, fugitive on every side. 

And fugitive in vain. The sylvan scene 

91. ■''Bow thy heavens, O Lord, and come down; touch the moun- 
tains and they shall smoke."— Psa/m cxiiv. 5. 

98. Mortal.— Causing: death; as in "Winter's Tale," "This news 
is mortal to the queen," and in Milton's "mortal taste" of the for- 
bidden fruit. 

102. Vortiginous.— Like a vortex or whirlpool. Cowper was too 
fond of the sesquipedalian Latin. 

107-110. "Near Laureana, in Calabria Ultra, a singular phenome- 
non had been produced: the surface of two whole tenements, with 
large olive and mulberry trees therein, situated in a valley perfectly 
level, had been detached by the eartliquake and transplanted, the 
trees still remaining in their places, to the distance of a mile from 
their former situations.'" — Letter of Sir Wrn. Hamilton. 



12 THE TASK. 

Migrates uplifted : and, with all its soil, 

Alighting in far distant fields, finds out 

A new possessor, and survives the change. 110 

Ocean has caught the frenzy, and, upwrought 

To an enormous and o'erbearing height, 

Not by a mighty wind, but by that voice 

Which winds and waves obey, invades the shore 

Resistless. Never such a sudden flood, 115 

Upridged so high, and sent on such a charge, 

Possessed an inland scene. Where now the throng 

That pressed the beach, and, hasty to depart. 

Looked to the sea for safety ? They are gone, 

Gone with the refluent wave into the deep — 120 

A prince with half his people ! Ancient towers, " 

And roofs embattled high, the gloomy scenes 

Where beauty oft and lettered worth consume 

Life in the unproductive shades of death. 

Fall prone ; the pale inhabitants come forth, 125 

And, happy in their unforeseen release 

From all the rigors of restraint, enjoy 

The terrors of the day that sets them free. 

Who then that has thee, would not hold thee fast, 

Freedom ? whom they that lose thee so regret, 130 

That even a judgment, making way for thee, 

Seems in their eyes a mercy for thy sake. 

Such evil Sin hath wrought, and such a flame 
Kindled in Heaven, that it burns down to Earth, 
And in the furious inquest that it makes 135 

On God's behalf, lays waste his fairest works. 
The very elements, though each be meant 
The minister of man, to serve his wants, 

114. Compare Matthew viii. 27. 

123. I,ettered wortli.— A good example is that of Silvio Pellico, 
an Italian author and patriot, whose celebrated work " My Prisons'" 
CLe mie Prigioni) describes his fifteen years of suffering. Cf . also 
Byron's " Prisoner of Cliillon.'" 

135. Inquest.— Is this word well chosen? A judicial inquiry should 
be calm, rather than " furious." 



THE TASK. 13 

Conspire agaiust him. With his breath he draws 

A plague into his blood ; and cannot use 140 

Life's necessary means, but he must die. 

Stortos rise to o'erwhelm him ; or if stormy winds 

Rise not, the waters of the deep shall rise. 

And, needing none assistance of the storm, 

Shall roll themselves ashore, and reach him there. ' 145 

The earth shall shake him out of .alLhis holds. 

Or make his house his grave ; nor so content, 

Shall counterfeit the motions of the flood, 

And drown him in her dry and dusty gulfs. 

What then ! — were they the wicked above all, 150 

And we the righteous, whose fast anchored isle 

Moved not, while theirs was rocked like a light skiff, 

The sport of every wave ? No : none are clear. 

And none than we more guilty. But where all 

Stand chargeable with guilt, and to the shafts • 155 

Of wrath obnoxious, God rnay choose his mark ; 

May punish, if he please, the less, to warn 

The more malignant. If he spared not them. 

Tremble and be amazed at thine escape. 

Far guiltier England, lest he spare not thee ? 160 

Happy the man who sees a God employed 
In all the good and ill that checker life ! 
Resolving all events, with their effects 
And manifold results, into the will 

And arbitration wise of the Supreme. 165 

Did not his eye rule all things, and intend 
The least of our concerns (since from the least 
The greatest oft originate) ; could chance 
Find place in his dominion, or dispose 
One lawless particle to thwart his plan, 170 

Then God might be surprised, and unforeseen 

150. Compare Luke xiii. 4. 

157. The less.— The less malignant. Force of the won! malignant 
here? 
166. The doctrliie of fore-ordination. 



14 THE TASK. 

Contingence might alarm him, and disturb 

The smooth and equal course of his affairs. 

This truth Philosophy, though eagle-eyed 

In nature's tendencies, oft overlooks ; 175 

And, having found his instrument, forgets, 

Or disregards, or more presumptuous still, 

Denies the power that wields it, God proclaims 

His hot displeasure against foolish men 

That live an atheist life ; involves the Heaven 180 

In tempests ; quits his grasp upon the winds. 

And gives them all their fury ; bids a plague 

Kindle a fiery boil upon the skin, 

And putrefy the breath of blooming Health. 

He calls for Famine, and the meager fiend 185 

Blows mildew from between his shriveled lips, 

And taints the golden ear. He springs his mines, 

And desolates a nation at a blast. 

Forth steps the spruce philosopher, and tells 

Of homogeneal and discordant springs 190 

And principles ; of causes, how they work 

By necessary laws their sure effects ; 

Of action and reaction. He has found 

The source of the disease, that nature feels. 



176. So Bacon more clearly says : "A little philosophy inclineth 
man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's 
minds about to rehgion; for while the mind of man looketh upon 
second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no 
further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, coufederate and 
linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity." 

] 78-188. A thoroughly Hebraic conception of a jealous and wrath- 
ful God who takes vengeance upon his enemies in this life. See 
11. 155, 156. 

181. Cowper is thinking, perhaps, of ^olus (in the .a^^neid) when in 
anger he let the winds out of the cave. 

185. Meager fiend.— So Virgil has "malesuada fames," evil- 
persuading famine. Cf. Shelley's epithet for death, in "Adonais," 
" the Eternal Hunger." 

187. Golden ear.— Heads of the ripening grain. 

189-196. Though Cowper would doubtless speak more respectfully 
of modern science, yet his satire may be not inappropriately applied 
to the self-complacent assumption of omniscience displayed by 
many of its great representatives. 



THE TASK. 15 

And bids the world take heart aud banish fear. 195 

Thou fool ! Will thy discovery of the cause 

Suspend the effect, or heal it ? Has not God 

Still wrought by means since first he made the world ? 

And did he not of old employ his means 

To drown it? What is his creation less 200 

Than a capacious reservoir of means 

Formed for his use, and ready at his will ? 

Go, dress thine eye with eye-salve ; ask of him. 

Or ask of whomsoever he has taught. 

And learn, though late, the genuine cause of all. 205 

England, with all thy faults, I love thee still — 
My country! and while yet a nook is left 
Where English minds and manners may be found. 
Shall be constrained to love thee. Though thy clime 
Be fickle, and thy year, most part, deformed 210 

With dripping rains, or withered by a frost, 
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies, 
Aud fields without a flower, for warmer France 
With all her vines ; nor for Ausonia's groves 
Of golden fruitage, and her myrtle bowers. 215 



196. Such methods of "suspending: the efifeet" as vaccination, 
lightning-rods, weather-signals, etc., suggest the answer. 

197-202. All second causes are but the means of exjiressing or as- 
serting the first cause, Clod. 

In calling creation a "capacious reservoir " Cowper is even less 
poetical than philosophical. 
206. So again in Bk. III.: 

"In whom I see 
Much that I love, and more that I admire, 
And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair, 
That pleases and yet shocks me." 

209. In Book V. he says : 

" My native nook of earth ! thy clime is rude, 
Replete with vapors, and disposes much 
All hearts to sadness, and none more than mine." 

214. Ausonia.— A poetical name for Italy. Cf. Campbell's " Ger- 
trude of Wyoming," ii. 15 : 

"Romantic Spain, 
Gay lilied fields of France; or, more refined. 
The soft Ausonia's monumental reign." 



16 THE O^SK. 

To shake thy senate, and from heights sublime 

Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire 

Upon thy foes, was never meant my task ; 

But I can feel thj'^ fortunes, and partake 

Thy joys and sorrows, with as true a heart 230 

As any thunderer there. And I can feel 

Thy follies too ; and with a just disdain, 

Frown at effeminates, whose very looks 

Reflect dishonor on the laud I love. 

How, in the name of soldiership and sense, 235 

Should England prosper, when such things, as smooth 

And tender as a girl, all essenced o'er 

With odors, and as profligate as sweet; 

Who sell their laurel for a myrtle wreath. 

And love when they should fight ; when such as these 330 

Presume to lay their hands upon the ark 

Of her magnificent and awful cause ? 

Time was when it was praise and boast enough 

In every clime, and travel where we might. 

That we were born her children. Praise enough 235 

To fill the ambition of a private man. 

That Chatham's language was his mother tongue, 

And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own. 

216. In "Paradise Regained," Milton speaks of the ancient orators 

" whose resistless eloquence 

Wielded at will that fierce democraty, 

Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece." 

221. Lord Chancellor Thurlow was nicknamed in Parliament the 

" Thunderer." 

221-232. Compare with this passage Hostpur's description of the 
courtier at the battle, " I. Henry FV." I. 3,— "a popinjay, perfumed 
like a milliner," etc., etc. 
227. All-essenced o'er. — Essenced all over. 

229. The laurel was worn by conquerors, the myrtle was worn at 
feasts. 
231. Compare I Chronicles xiii. 9, 10. 

237. Chatham — William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-1778). "He 
was admired by all Europe," says Macaiilay. " He was the first 
Englishman of liis time; and he made England the first country in 
the woi-ld." 

238. Wolfe.-General Wolfe, who died nobly wbile storming Que- 
bec, Se^jt. 12, 1759. 



THE TASK. 17 

Farewell those honors, iind farewell with them 

The hope of such hereafter I They have fallen 240 

Each in his tield of glory ; one in arms. 

And one in council — Wolfe upon the lap 

Of smiling Victory that moment won, 

And Chatham heart-sick of his country's shame ! 

They made us many soldiers. Chatham, still 245 

Consulting England's happiness at home, 

Secured it by an unforgiving frown, 

If any wronged her. Wolfe, where'er he fought, 

Pat so much of his heart into his act. 

That his example had a magnet's force, 250 

And all were swift to follow whom all loved. 

Those suns are set. Oh, rise some other such ! 

Or all that we have left is empty talk 

Of old achievements, and despair of new. 

Now hoist the sail, and let the streamers float 255 

Upon the wanton breezes. Strew the deck 
With lavender, and sprinkle liquid sweets. 
That no rude savor maritime invade 
The nose of nice nobility ! Breathe soft 
Ye clarionets, and softer still ye flutes, 260 

That winds and waters, lulled by magic sounds, 
May bear ns smoothly to the Gallic shore ! 
True, we have lost an empire — let it pass. 
True, we may thank the perfidy of France, 



242. One in council.—" Broken with apre and disease, the Earl 
was borne to the House of Lords on the 7th of April, and uttered in 
a few broken words his protest against the proposal to surrender 
America. 'His Majesty,' he nuirmured, 'succeeded to an Empire 
as great in extent as its reputation was unsullied. Seventeen years 
ago this people was the terror of the world.' Then, falling back in 
a swoon, he was borne home to die."— Green's Hist, of the Eng. 
People. 

263. Let it pass.— Impersonal it. Cf. " let that pass," 1. 267. 

264. The perfidy of France.— A treaty of alliance was made 
between France and the United States early in 1778, and a fleet of 
sixteen w^ar-vessels sent, with 4000 men. Cornwallis surrendered to 
Washington and Lafayette at Yorktown, Oct. 19, 1781. In a letter to 
Newton, Cowper says : " France and, of course, Spain have acted a 



18 THE fASK. 

That picked the jewel out of England's crown, 265 

With all the cunning of an envious shrew. 

And let that pass — 'twas but a trick of state. 

A brave man knows no malice, but at once 

Forgets in peace the injuries of war. 

And gives his direst foe a friend's embrace. 270 

And, shamed as we have been, to the very beard 

Braved and defied, and in our own sea proved 

Too weali for those decisive blows that once 

Ensured us mastery there, we yet retain 

Some small pre-eminence ; we justly boast 375 

At least superior jockeyship, and claim 

The honors of the turf as all our own. 

Go then, well worthy of the praise ye seek, 

Afid show the shame, ye might conceal at home. 

In foreign eyes ! — Be grooms, and win the plate, 280 

Where once your noble fathers won a crown ! 

'Tis generous to communicate your skill 

To those that need it. Folly is soon learned, 

And under such preceptors, who can fail ! 

There is a pleasure in poetic pains 285 

treacherous, a thievish part. They have stolen America froin Eng- 
land, and whether tlaey are able to possess tlieniselves of that jewel 
or not hereafter, it was doubtless what they intended." 
271. To "beard the lion " is a saying as old as the Greeks. 

279. Jockeyship.— The name jockey was originally Jockey, di- 
minutive of Jack, the common name, first of the groom, then of the 
rider. 

Cowper suggests ironically that it is some honor to England to 
have been able to teach France the art of horse-racing. 

280. The plate.— The prize of gold or silver plate, given at tlie 
race, as the " Queen's plate." 

280, 281. So Pope complained: 

"The peers grew proud in hoi"semanship to excel, 
Newmarket's glory rose as Britain's fell." 

284. See close of Bk. I. for a similar, -though milder, outburst of 
patriotic indignation at the folly of Mle and effeminate Englishmen 
who, "graced with a sword, and worthier of a fan," have made: 

"Our arch of empire, steadfast but for jou, 
A mutilated structure, soon to fall." 

285. So Keats sang: 

" Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, 
And doubly sweet a brotherhood of song." 



THE TASK. 19 

Which only poets know. The shifts and turns, 

The expedients and inventions multiform. 

To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms 

Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win — 

To arrest the tieeting images that till 290 

The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast, 

And force them sit, till he has penciled off 

A faithful likeness of the forms he views ; 

Then to dispose his copies with such art 

That each may find its most propitious light, 295 

And shine by situation, hardly less 

Than by the labor and the skill it cost ; 

Are occupations of the poet's mind 

So pleasing, and that steal away the thought 

With such address from themes of sad import, 300 

That, lost in his own musings, happy man I 

He feels the anxieties of life, denied 

Their wonted entertainment, all retire. 

Such joys has he that sings. But ah ! not such, 

Or seldom such, the hearers of his song. 305 

Fastidious, or else listless, or perhaps 

Aware of nothing arduous in a task 

They never undertook, they little note 

His dangers or escapes, and haply find 

Their least amusement where he found the most. 310 

But is amusement all ? Studious of song. 

And yet ambitious not to sing in vain, 

I would not trifle merely, though the world 

Be loudest in their praise who do no more. 



2QS~S<H. In a letter to Newton Cowper says: "Poetry, above all 
things, is useful to me in this respect. While I am held in pursuit of 
pretty imaffps, or a pretty way of expressing them. I forget every- 
thing that is irksome."" In another letter he says: '* Encompassed by 
the midnight of absolute despair, and a thousand times filled with un- 
speakable horror, I first commenced an author. Distress drove me 
to it, and the impossibility of subsisting without some employment 
still recommends it." 



20 THE fASK. 

Yet what can satire, whether grave or gay? 315 

It may correct a foible, may chastise 

The freaks of fashion, regulate the dress, 

Retrench a sword-blade, or displace a patch ; 

But where are its sublimer trophies found? 

What vice has it subdued? whose heart reclaimed 320 

By rigor, or whom laughed into reform ? 

Alas ! Leviathan is not so tamed ; 

Laughed at, he laughs again ; and stricken hard, 

Turns to the stroke his adamantine scales. 

That fear no discipline of human hands. 325 

The pulpit, therefore, (and I name it filled 
"With solemn awe, that bids me well beware 
With what intent I touch that holy thing) — 
The pulpit (when the satirist has at last, 
Strutting and vaporing in an empty school, 330 

Spent all his force and made no proselyte) — 
I say the pulpit (in the sober use 
Of its legitimate, peculiar powers) 
Must stand acknowledged, while the world shall stand. 
The most important and effectual guard, 335 

Support, and ornament of Virtue's cause. 
There stands the messenger of truth ; there stands 

315. Can.— Used here nearly in its original sense, to be able to do, 
or to have knoivledge or skill (A-S. cunnan; whence the Scotch ken, 
and the modern cunning), as in "King Lear," iv. 4: 
"What can man's wisdom 
In the restoring his bereaved sense?" 
318. Swords w^ere still worn by gentlemen in Cowper's day. The 
feminine craze for wearing "patches" or "beauty spots" on the 
face is best described in Addison's genial satire, especially in the 
essay on " Party Patches," Specfaio?-, No. 81. In "Hudibras" But- 
ler suggests one fieak of the fashion in speaking of the 
" black patches that she wears, 
Cut into suns, and moons, and stars." 
316-320. Cf. Pope's idea of the power of satire: 

"Yes, I am proud: I must be proud to see 
Men not afraid of God, afraid of me: 
Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne, 
Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone." 
322. Compai'e Job xli. 

\ ■ 



THE TASK. 21 

The legate of the skies ! — His theme divine, 

His office sacred, his credentials clear. 

By him the violated law speaks out 340 

Its thunders ; aud by him, in strains as sweet 

As angels use, the Gospel whispers peace. 

He establishes the strong, restores the weak, 

Reclaims the wanderer, binds the broken heart, 

And, armed himself in panoply complete 345 

Of heavenly temper, furnishes with arms 

Bright as his own, and trains, by every rule 

Of holy discipline, to glorious war, 

The sacramental host of God's elect ! 

Are all such teachers ? Would to Heaven all were ! 350 

But hark — the doctor's voice ! — fast wedged between 

Two empirics he stands, and with swoln cheeks 

Inspires the News, his trumpet. Keener far 

Than all invective is his bold harangue, 

"While through that public organ of report 355 

He hails the clergy, and, defying shame, 

Announces to the world his own and theirs. 

He teaches those to read, whom schools dismissed, 

And colleges, untaught ; sells accent, tone. 

And emphasis in score, and gives to prayer 360 

The adagio and andante it demands. 

He grinds divinity of other days 

Down into modern use ; transforms old print 

To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes 

351-371. The picture of a certain Dr. John Trusler, doctor, book 
seller, preacher, teacher of elocution, and literary hack. His spe- 
ciality, appai'ently, was "coaching" ignoi'ant clergymen. 

353. The News.— Probably some newspaper in which the minis- 
terial quack's advertisement appeared between those of two medi- 
cal quacks, the "empirics."" 

360. In score. — A musical term: all the parts of a composition 
arranged so as to meet the eye at once. He marks the sermons and 
prayers so as to indicate the proper "accent, tone, and emphasis." 

3(31. Adagio and andante.— Italian musical terms, sioic and 
mocleraiely sloiv. 

362. He touched up old sermons, printed them in "zigzag" type, 
and sold them as " facsimile manuscript sermons." People in the 
galleries looking down upon the pulpit would think tliem ^ewuiu^. 



23 THE TiSK. 

Of gallery critics by a thousand arts. 365 

Are there who purchase of the doctor's ware ? 
Oh, name it not in Gath ! — it cannot be, 
That grave and learned clerks should need such aid. 
He doubtless is in sport, and, does but droll. 
Assuming thus a rank unknown before — 370 

Grand caterer and dry-nurse of the church ! 
I venerate the man whose heart is warm, 
Whose hands are pure, whose doctrine and whose life, 
Coincident, exhibit lucid proof 

That he is honest in the sacred cause. 375 

To such I render more than mere respect, 
Whose actions say that they respect themselves. 
But loose iu morals, and in manners vain, 
In conversation frivolous, in dress 

Extreme, at once rapacious and profuse; 380 

Frequent in park with lady at his side, 
Ambling and prattling scandal as he goes; 
But rare at home, and never at his books. 
Or with his pen, save when he scrawls a card; 
Constant at routs, familiar with a round 385 

Of ladyships, a stranger to the poor; 

367. Compare II. Samuel i. 20. 

368. L.earne<l clerks. — L. clerictis, a priest; wbence c^erf/?/. Orig- 
inally any scholar, as in the Middle Ages all learned persons were 
ecclesiastics,— like Chaucer's 

" Clerk of Oxenford also. 
That unto logik hadde long i-go." 

369. Droll.— To jest or trifle. 

378-394. Cowper's denunciation of the clergy was amply deserved. 
The historian Knight says: " The indecorum, if not the profligacy, of 
a large number of the Enghsh clergy, for a period of half a century, 
is exhibited by too many contemporary witnesses to be considered as 
the exaggeration of novelists, satirical poets, travelers, and dissent- 
ers." Arthur Young said, in his "Travels in France." 1789: "The 
French clergy preserved, what is not always preserved in England, 
an exterior decency of behavior. One did not find among them 
poachers and fox-hunters, who, having spent the morning in scam- 
pering after hounds, dedicate the evening to the bottle, and reel from 
inebriety to the pulpit." See Goldsmitn's "Citizen of the World," 
Letter .58. 

385. Rout.— A crowd or rabble; iu the last century, a fashionable 
term for an evtniug reception. Seel. 629, 



THE TASK. 23 

Ambitious of preferment for its gold, 

Aud well-prepared, by ignorance and sloth, 

By infidelity and love o' the world, 

To make God's work a sinecure; a slave 390 

To his own pleasures and his patron's pride; 

From such apostles, O ye mitered heads, 

Preserve the church! and lay not careless haiids 

On skulls that cannot teach, and will not learn. 

Would I describe a preacher, such as Paul, 395 

Were he on earth, would hear, approve, and own, 
Paul should himself direct me, I would trace 
His master-strokes, and draw from his design. 
I would express him simple, grave, sincere; 
In doctrine uncorrupt; in language plain, 400 

And plain in manner; decent, solemn, chaste. 
And natural in gesture; much impressed 
Himself, as conscious of his awful charge, 
Aud anxious mainly that the flock he feeds 
May feel it too; affectionate in look, 405 

And tender in address, as well becomes 
A messenger of grace to guilty men. 
Behold the picture! — Is it like? — Like whom? 
The things that mount the rostrum with a skip, 
And then skip down again; pronounce a text; 410 

Cry — hem! and reading what they never wrote. 
Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work, 
And with a well-bred whisper close the scene! 

In man or woman, but far most in man, 
And most of all in man that ministers 415 

And serves the altar, in my soul I loathe 
All affectation. 'Tis my perfect scorn; 
Object of my implacable disgust. 
What! — will a man play tricks, will he indulge 
A silly fond conceit of his fair form, 420 

397-408. See I. Timothy iii. 1-11. 

430. Conceit of.— Vanity ou account of his fair form. 



24 THE yi.SK. 

And just proportion, fashionable mien, 

And pretty face, in presence of liis God? 

Or will be seek to dazzle me witb tropes, 

As witb tbe diamond on bis lily band. 

And play bis brilliant parts before my eyes, 435 

Wben I am liungry for tbe bread of life? 

He mocks bis Maker, prostitutes and sbames 

His noble office, and, instead of Irutb, 

Displaying bis own beauty, starves bis flock. 

Tberefore avaunt all attitude, and stare, 430 

And start tbeatric, practiced at tbe glass I 

I seek divine simplicity in him 

"Who bandies things divine; and all besides, 

Tliougb learned with labor, and though much admired 

By curious eyes and judgments ill-informed, 435 

To me is odious as the nasal twang 

Heard at conventicle, where worthy men. 

Misled by custom, strain celestial themes 

Through the pressed nostril, spectacle bestrid. 

Some, decent in demeanor while they preach, 440 

That task performed, relapse into themselves, 

And having spoken wisely, at tbe close 

Grow wanton, and give proof to every eye. 

Whoe'er was edified, themselves were not! 

Forth comes the pocket mirror. — First we stroke 445 

An eyebrow; next compose a straggling lock; 

Then witb an air naost gracefully performed, 

Fall back into our seat, extend an arm, 

And lay it at its ease witb gentle care. 

With handkerchief in hand depending low: 450 



423. Tropes.— Rhetorical figures. 

436. Nasal twang.— A sanctimonious aifectation, generally sup- 
posed to have originated with the Puritans. But Chaucer's Prioress 
sang the divine service— 

" Entuned in hire nose ful semely." 

437. Conventicle was the name applied in contempt to any as- 
sembly of dissenters. 



THE TASK. 25 

The better baud, more busy, gives tbe nose 

Its bergamot, or aids the indebted eye 

With opera-gbiss, to watch the moving scene, 

And recognize the slow-retiring fair. — 

Now this is fulsome, and offends me more 455 

That in a churchman slovenly neglect 

And rustic coarseness would. A heavenly mind 

May be indifferent to her house of clay, 

And slight the hovel as beneath her care ; 

But how a bod)' so fantastic, trim, 460 

And quaint, in its deportment and attire, 

Can lodge a heavenly mind — demands a doubt. 

He that negotiates between God and man, 
As God's ambassador, the grand concerns 
Of judgment and of mercy, should beware 465 

Of lightness in his speech. 'Tis pitiful 
To court a grin, when you should woo a soul ; 
To break a jest, when pity would inspire 
Pathetic exhortation ; and to address 

The skittish fancy with facetious tales, 470 

When sent with God's commission to the heart. 
So did not Paul. Direct me to a quip 
Or merry turn in all he ever wrote, 
And I consent you take it for your text, 
Your only one, till sides and benches fail. 475 

Ko : he was serious in a serious cause, 
And understood too well the weighty terms 
That he had taken in charge. He would not stoop 



451. Which is the " better hand" ? 

452. Bergamot. — A variety of snuflf perfumed with bergamot. 
458. Cf. Job iv. 19 and II. Corinthians v. 1. 

463. To break a jest, — More commonly, to crack a joke. 

472. Quip. — A smart turn, jest, or sarcasm; as in Milton's " L'Al- 
legro" : 

" Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles. " 

475. Till side.s and'benclies fail.— Until the sides of those sitting 
on tbe benches are worn out with laughter, would seein to be the 
pieaning. 



36 THE 'JkASK. 

To conquer those by jocular exploits, 

"Wliom truth and soberness assailed in vain. 480 

O Popular Applause ! what heart of man 
Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms ? 
The wisest and the best feel urgent need 
Of all their caution in thy gentlest gales ; 
But swelled into a gust— who then, alas ! 485 

With all his canvas set, and inexpert, 
And therefore heedless, can withstand thy power ? 
Praise from the riveled lips of toothless, bald 
Decrepitude, and in the looks of lean 
And craving Poverty, and in the bow 490 

Respectful of the smutched artificer, 
Is oft too welcome, and may much disturb 
The bias of the purpose. How much more, 
Poured forth by beauty splendid and polite, 
In language soft as Adoration breathes ? 495 

Ah spare your idol ! think him human still ; 
Charms he may have, but he has frailties too ; 
Dote not too much, nor spoil what ye admire. 

All truth is from the sempiternal source 
Of light divine. But Egypt, Greece and Rome, 500 

Drew from the stream below. More favored we 
Drink, when we choose it, at the fountain head. 
To them it flowed much mingled and defiled 
With hurtful error, prejudice, and dreams 
Illusive of philosophy, so called, 505 

But falsely. Sages after sages strove 
In vain to filter off a crystal draught 
Pure from the lees, which often more enhanced 
The thirst than slaked it, and not seldom bred 



488. Rivelled.— Wrinkled, or shriveled. 

491. Smutched Dirty, smirched. Cf. "King John," iv. 2 

Another lean unwashed artificer." 

499. Sempiternal.— Eternal; from L. semper, always. 

501. Below Away from the foimtnin-head. 

505. Cf. I. Timothy vi. 20, and Colossians ii. 8, 



THE TASK. 27 

Intoxication and delirium wild. 510 

In vain they pushed inquiry to the birth 

And spring time of the world ; asked, Whence is man ? 

Why formed at all? and wherefore as he is ? 

Where must he find his Maker? with what rites 

Adore him? Will he hear, accept, and bless? 515 

Or does he sit regardless of his works? 

Has man within him an immortal seed ? 

Or does the tomb take all ? If he survive 

His ashes, where? and in what weal or woe ? 

Knots worthy of solution, which alone 520 

A deity could solve. Their answers, vague 

And all at random, fabulous and dark. 

Left them as dark themselves. Their rules of life, 

Defective and uusanctioned, proved too w^eak 

To bind the roving appetite, and lead 525 

Blind nature to a God not yet revealed. 

'Tis revelation satisfies all doubts. 

Explains all mysteries, except her own, 

And so illuminates the path of life. 

That fools discover it, and stray no more. 530 

Now tell me, dignified and sapient sir. 

My man of morals, nurtured in the shades 

Of Academus, is this false or true ? 



516. In Bk. V. Cowper says we invent for ourselves— 

" Gods such as guilt makes welcome, gods that sleep, 
Or disregai'd our follies, or that sit 
Amused spectators of this bustling stage." 

517. Plato's answer to this question was not altogether " fabulous 
and dark." 

526. Nature. — Man in his natural state. 

527. With the change of times and beliefs, Tennyson's lines, in 
" In Memoriam," have come to be quite as true as Cowpers: 

" There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds." 
530. "Wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein." — 
Isaiah XXXV. 8. 

.533. Academus. — The Academia was a public garden near Ath- 
ens, presented to his fellow-citizeDs by Academus. Here Plato 
Igctui'ed; hence we have the " Platonic Academy." 



38 THE T11SK. 

Is Christ the abler teacher, or the schools ? 

If Christ, then why resort at every turn 535 

To Athens or to Rome, for wisdom short 

Of man's occasions, when in him reside 

Grace, knowledge, comfort — anunfathomed store? 

How oft, when Paul has served us with a text. 

Has Epictetus, Plato, Tully, preached ! 540 

Men that, if now alive, would sit content 

And humble learners of a Saviour's worth. 

Preach it who might. Such was their love of truth, 

Their thirst of knowledge, and their candor too ! 

And thus it is. The pastor, either vain 545 

By nature, or by flattery made so, taught 
To gaze at his own splendor, and to exalt 
Absurdly, not his office, but himself ; 
Or unenlightened, and too proud to learn; 
Or vicious, and not therefore apt to teach; 550 

Perverting often by the stress of lewd 
And loose example, whom he should instruct; 
Exposes, and holds up to broad disgrace 
The noblest function, and discredits much 
The brightest truths that man has ever seen. 555 

For ghor^tly counsel, if it either fall 
Below the exigence, or be not backed 
With show of love, at least with hopeful proof 
Of some sincerity on the giver's part; 

Or be dishonored in the exterior form 560 

And mode of its conveyance by such tricks 
As move derision, or by foppish airs 
And histrionic mummery, that let down 
The pulpit to the level of the stage, 

534. Schools. -Schools of ancient philosophy. 

540 Epictetus.— A Stoic philosopher, made a slave at Rome m 
Nero's reign. The "Enchiridion" containing his " Thoughts" is 
much admired for its pure and ennobling principles. 

Tully is the Romau orator and philosopher, Marcus Tullms 
Cicero, 



THE TASK. 29 

Drops from the lips a disregarded thing. 565 

The weak perhaps are moved, but are not taught. 

While prejudice in meu of stronger minds 

Takes deeper root, confirmed by what they see. 

A relaxation of religion's hold 

Upon the roving and untutored heart — 570 

Soon follows, and, the curb of conscience snapped, 

The laity run wild. But do they now ? 

Note their extravagance, and be convinced. 

As nations, ignorant of God, contrive 
A wooden one, so we, no longer taught 575 

By monitors that mother church supplies, 
Now make our own. Posterity will ask 
(If e'er posterity see verse of mine) 
Some fifty or a hundred lustrums hence, 
What was a monitor in George's days ? 580 

Mj very gentle reader yet unborn, 
Of whom I needs must augur better things, 
Since Heaven would sure grow weary of a world 
Productive only of a race like us, 

A monitor is wood — plank shaven thin. 585 

We wear it at our backs. There, closely braced 
And neatly fitted, it compresses hard 
The prominent and most unsightly bones. 
And binds the shoulders flat. We prove its use 
Sovereign and most effectual to secure 590 

A form, not now gymnastic as of yore. 
From rickets and distortion, else our lot. 
But thus admonished, we can walk erect — 

579. liiistrum.— A period of five years; so called from the Roman 
custom of offering: an expiatory sacfifice (L. lustruvi) once in five 
years for the purification of the whole people. 

580-595. Monitor.— More generally called " back-board." " A 
careful and undeviating use of the back-hoard,'''' says Thackeray, 
"is recommended as necessary to the acquirement of that dignified 
deportment and carriage so requisite for every young lady of fash- 
ion." 

591. Gymnastic— Athletic, vigorous; rarely used in this sense. 

592. Rickets. — A disease of the spine. 



30 THE "TASK. 

One proof at least of manhood ! while the friend 

Sticks close, a Mentor worthy of his charge. 505 

Our habits, costlier than Lucullus wore, 

And by caprice as multiplied as his. 

Just please us while the fashion is at full, 

But change with every moon. The sycophant 

That waits to dress us, arbitrates their date; 600 

Surveys his fair reversion with keen eye; 

Finds one ill made, another obsolete; 

This fits not nicely, that is ill conceived; 

And making prize of all that he condemns, 

With our expenditure defrays his own. 605 

Variety 's the very spice of life. 

That gives it all its flavor. We have run 

Through every change, that Fancy, at the loom 

Exhausted, has had genius to supply; 

And studious of mutation still, discard 610 

A real elegance, a little used, 

For monstrous novelty, and strange disguise. 

We sacrifice to dress, till household joys 

And comfort cease. Dress drains our cellar dry, 

And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires, — 615 

And introduces hunger, frost, and woe, 

Where peace and hospitality might reign. 

What man that lives, and that knows how to live, 

Would fail to exhibit at the public shows 

A form as splendid as the proudest there, 620 

Though appetite raise outcries at the cost ? 

A man o' the town dines late, but soon enough 

596-599. Liuculliis.— A Roman nobleman, famous for his luxm-y 
and liberality. Horace tells the story (Epistles, Bk. I. 6) that Lucul- 
lus being asked if he could furnish 100 chlamydes (mantles) for a 
stage play, replied that he had 500 such " habits" at home which he 
would furnish. 

600. Arbitrates tlieir date.— Decides whether they are in fash- 
ion or not. , , , . 

601. Reversion.— The property that is to revert to him when his 
master is through with it; a legal term. 

608. Fancy at the loom exhausted.— Explain the line. 



THE TASK. 31 

With reasonable forecast and dispatch, 

To insure a side-box station at half-price. 

You think, perhaps, so delicate his dress, 625 

His daily fare as delicate. Alas! 

He picks clean teeth, and, busy as he seems 

AVith an old tavern quill, is hungry yet! 

The route is Folly's circle, which he draws 

With magic wand. So potent is the spell, 630 

That none, decoyed into that fatal ring, 

Unless by Heaven's peculiar grace, escape. 

There we grow early gray, but never wise; 

There form connections, but acquire uo friend; 

Solicit pleasure hopeless of success; 635 

Waste youth in occupations only fit 

For second childhood, and devote old age 

To sports, which only childhood could excuse; 

There they are happiest, who dissemble best 

Their weariness; and they the most polite, 640 

Who squander time and treasure with a smile. 

Though at their own destruction. She that asks 

Her dear five hundred friends, contemns them all, 

And hates their coming. They (what can they less?) 

Make just reprisals, and, with cringe and shrug, 645 

And bow obsequious, hide their hate of her. 

All catch the frenz}^ downward from her Grace, 

Whose flambeaux flash against the morning skies, 

And gild our chamber ceilings as they pass, 

To her, who, frugal only that her thrift 650 

May feed excesses she can ill afford. 

Is hackneyed home unlackeyed; who, in haste 

624. Side-box station. — A place in one of the boxes at the 
theatre. 

643. Dear.— The quotation-marks ("dear") must be understood. 

648. Before the days of g:as-hghted streets people who could afford 
it were attended by servants cavvyinf!; flambeaux, or by " link-boys" 
with their pitch-and-tow links or torches. 

652. Hackneyed home. — Driven home iu a hackney coach, i. e. 
in a common hired vehicle, unattended. 



32 THE •TASK. 

Alighting, turns the key in her own door, 

And, at the watchman's lantern borrowing light, 

Finds a cold bed her only comfort left. 655 

Wives beggar husbands, husbands starve their wives. 

On Fortune's velvet altar offering up 

Their last poor pittance. — Fortune, most severe 

Of Goddesses yet known, and costlier far 

Than all that held their routs in Juno's heaven ! 660 

So fare we in this prison-house the World; 

And 'tis a fearful spectacle to see 

So many maniacs dancing in their chains. 

They gaze upon the links that hold them fast, 

With eyes of anguish, execrate their lot, 665 

Then shake them in despair, and dance again! 

Now basket up the family of plagues 
That waste our vitals; peculation, sale 
Of honor, perjury, corruption, frauds 
By forgery, by subterfuge of law, 670 

By tricks and lies as numerous and as keen 
As the necessities their authors feel; 
Then cast them, closely bundled, every brat 
At the right door. Profusion is the sire. 
Profusion unrestrained, with all that's base 675 

In character, has littered all the land, 
And bred, within the memory of no few, 
A priesthood, such as Baal's was of old, 
A people, such as never was till now. 

657. Fortune's velvet altar. — The gaming table. " The fine 
gentlemen of the days of Chatham and Lord North," says Knight, 
" pursued their vocation of gambling with the assiduous persever- 
ance of the most money-getting tradesman." Gibbon speaks of the 
illustrious Charles J. Fox as having prepared himself for opposing a 
certain petition of the clergy " by passing twenty-four hours in the 
pious exercise of hazard; his devotion only cost him about five hun- 
dred pounds an hour— in all, eleven thousand pounds." 
661. Cf. Wordsworth's " Intimations of Immortality :" 
" Shadis of the prison-house begin to close 
Upon the growing boy, 
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 
He sees it in his joy." 



THE TASK. 33 

It is a liuugry vice:— it eats up all 680 

That gives society its beauty, streugth, 
Conveuieuce, aud security, and use ; 
Makes meu mere vermiu, woilliy to be trapped 
And gibbeted, as fast as catclipole claws 
Can seize the slippery prey; unties the knot 685 

Of Union, aud converts the sacred band. 
That holds mankind together, to a scourge. 
Profusion, deluging a state with lusts 
Of grossest nature and of worst effects. 
Prepares it for its ruin; hardens, blinds, 690 

And warps the consciences of public men, 
Till they can laugh at Virtue, mock the fools 
That trust them, and in the end disclose a face 
That w^ould have shocked Credulity herself. 
Unmasked, vouchsaliug this their sole excuse — 695 

Since all alike are selfish, why not they? 
This does Profusion, and the accursed cause 
Of such deep mischief has itself a cause. 
In colleges and halls in ancient days. 
When learniug, virtue, piety, and truth 700 

Were precious, and inculcated with care, 
There dwelt a sage called Discipline. His head 
Kot yet by time completely silvered o'er, 
Bespoke him past the bounds of freakish youth, 
But strong for service still, and unimpaired. 705 

His e3^e was meek and gentle, and a smile 
Played on his lips; and in his speech was heard 
Paternal sweetness, dignity, and love. 
The occupation dearest to his heart 
Was to encourage goodness. He would stroke 710 

684. Catchpole.— " An instrument formerly used for seizing and 
securing a man who would otherwise be out of reach. It was carried 
by foot-soldiers in combats with horsemen, and later by civil officers 
in apprehending criminals. The head, made of light metal bars, 
was provided with strong springs, so arranged as to hold firmly any- 
thing, as the neck or a limb of one pursued, over which It was 
toiXii^V— Century Dictionary. 



34 THE* TASK. 

The head of modest and ingenuous worth 

That blushed at its own praise; and press the youth 

Close to his side that pleased him. Learning grew 

Beneath his care, a thriving vigorous plant; 

The mind was well informed, the passions held 715 

Subordinate, and diligence was choice. 

If e'er it chanced, as sometimes chance it must, 

That one among so many overleaped 

The limits of control, his gentle eye 

Grew stern, and darted a severe rebuke; 720 

His frown was full of terror, and his voice 

Shook the delinquent with such fits of awe. 

As left him not, till penitence had won 

Lost favor back again, and closed the breach. 

But Discipline, a faithful servant long, 725 

Declined at length into the vale of years; 

A palsy struck his arm; his sparkling eye 

Was quenched in rheums of age; his voice, unstrung, 

Grew tremulous, and moved derision more 

Than reverence in perverse, rebellious youth. 730 

So colleges and halls neglected much 

Their good old friend; and Discipline at length, 

O'erlooked and unemployed, fell sick and died. 

Then Study languished. Emulation slept. 

And Virtue fled. The schools became a scene 735 

Of solemn farce, where Ignorance in stilts, 

His cap well lined with logic not his own, 

With parrot tongue performed the scholar's part. 

Proceeding soon a graduated dunce. 

716. Diligence was freely chosen. 

736. The Rev. V. Knox, a Fellow at Oxford, describes the " farce" 
of a degree examination thus : " The greatest dunce gets his testi- 
monium signed with as much care and credit as tlie first genius. . . . 
The examiners and candidates often converse on the last drinking 
bout, or read the newspaper or a novel, or divert themselves as well 
as they can in any way, till the clock strikes eleven, when all parties 
descend, and the testivionium is signed by the masters." See 
Knight's "Popular History," vol. vii. p. 111. 

739. Proceeding.— Proceeding to a degree was n university phraso 
for taking a degree. 



THE TASK. 35 

Then compromise had place, and scrutiny 740 

Became stone blind; precedence went in truck. 

And he was competent whose purse Was so. 

A dissolution of all bonds ensued; 

The curbs invented for the mulish mouth 

Of headstrong youth were broken; bars and bolts 745 

Grew rusty by disuse; and massy gates 

Forgot their office, opening with a touch; 

Till gowns at length are found mere masquerade, 

The tasseled cap and the spruce band a jest, 

A mockery of the world! "What need of these 750 

For gamesters, jockeys, brothelers impure. 

Spendthrifts, and booted sportsmen, oftener seen 

With belted waist and pointers at their heels, 

Than in the bounds of duty? What was learned, 

If aught was learned in childhood, is forgot; 755 

And such expense as pinches parents blue, 

And mortities the liberal hand of love. 

Is squandered in pursuit of idle sports 

And vicious pleasures; buys the boy a name, 

That sits a stigma on his father's house, 760 

And cleaves through life inseparably close 

To him that wears it. What can after-games 

Of riper joys, and commerce with the world. 

The lewd vain world that must receive him soon, 

Add to such erudition, thus acquired, 765 

Where science and where viitue are professed ? 

They may confirm his habits, rivet fast 

His folly, but to spoil him is a task, 

That bids defiance to the united powers 

Of fashion, dissipation, taverns, stews. 770 



741. Precedence went in truck.— Position and honors were 
bought and sold, as by exchange or barter. Cf. Burke's speech on 
" Conciliation with America "; " Despotism itself is obliged to truck 
and huckster^'" 

770. Wilberforce thus describes his experience on first entering 
Cambridge ic J776 ,' "I was introduced, on the very first night of my 



36 THE -TASK. 

Now blame we most the nurslings, or the nurse ? 

The children crooked, and twisted, aiid deformed, 

Through want of care; or her whose winking eye, 

And slumbering oscituncy mars the brood ? 

The nurse, no doubt. Regardless of her charge, 775 

She needs herself correction; needs to learn, 

That it is dangerous sporting with the world, 

With things so sacred as the nation's trust, 

The nurture of her youth, her dearest pledge. 

All are not such. I had a brother once— 780 

Peace to the memory of a man of worth, 
A man of letters, and of manners too ! 
Of manners sweet as Virtue always wears, 
When gay Good-nature dresses her in smiles. 
He graced a college, in which order yet 785 

Was sacred; and was honored, loved, and wept. 
By more than one, themselves conspicuous there. 
Some minds are tempered happily, and mixed 
With such ingredients of good sense, and taste 
Of what is excellent in man, they thirst 790 

With such a zeal to be what they approve, 
That no restraints can circumscribe them more 
Than they themselves by choice, for wisdom's sake. 
Nor can example hurt them : wha,t they see 
Of vice in others but enhancing more 795 

The charms of virtue in their just esteem. 
If such escape contagion, and emerge 
Pure from so foul a pool to shine abroad. 
And give the world their talents and themselves, 

arrival, to as licentious a set of men as well can be conceived. They 
drank hard, and their conversation was even worse than their lives ; 
often, iudeer], I was horror-struck at their conduct." 

774. Oscitaiicy.— Sleepiness, yawning : L. oscitare, to grape. 

780. The Rev. John Cowper, a FeUow of Corpus Christi College, 
Cambridge, who died in 1770, and of whom the poet says : " He was 
a man of a most candid and ingenuous spirit ; his temper remark- 
ably sweet, and in his behavior to me he had always manifested an 
uncommon affection," 

789. Taste.— Appreciation. 



THE TASK. 37 

Small tlianks to those whose negligence or sloth 800 

Exposed their inexperience to the snare, 
And left them to an undirected choice. 

See then the quiver broken and decayed, 
In which are kept our arrows ! Rusting there 
In wild disorder, and unfit for use, 805 

"What wonder if, discharged into the world, 
They shame their shooters with a random flight, 
Their points obtuse, and feathers drunk with wine I 
Well may the church wage unsuccessful war 
With such artillerj^ armed. Vice parries wide 810 

The undreaded volley with a sword of straw. 
And stands an impudent and fearless mark. 

Have we not tracked the felon home, and found " 
His birth-place and his dam ? The country mourns, 
Mourns because every plague that can infest 815 

Society, and that saps and worms the base 
Of the edifice that Policy has raised. 
Swarms in all quarters: meets the eye, the ear, 
And suffocates the breath at every turn. 
Profusion breeds them; and the cause itself 820 

Of that calamitous mischief has been found: 
Found too where most offensive, in the skirts 
Of the robed pedagogue ! Else let the arraigned 
Stand up unconscious, and refute the charge. 
So when the Jewish leader stretched his arm, 825 



803. Quiver.— The university. Compare Psalms cxxvii. 4, 5. 

813. Have we not tracked this wide-spread vice to its proper 
source, the universities ? Cowper overlooked many other sources of 
the general corruption. 

817. Policy.— Civil power, or government, which looks to the inter- 
ests of society. 

825. S^e Exodus viii. 2-14. 

"I do not think that drinkers, gamesters, fornicators, If^wd talkers, 
and profane jesters— men, in short, of no principles either religious 
or moral (and such, we know, are the majority of those sent out by 
the universities) — can be dishonored by a comparison with anything 
on this side of Erehns. I do not therefore repent of my frogs," — 
Coivper''s letter to ITnwin. 



38 THE* TASK. 

Aud waved his rod divine, a race obscene, 

Spawned in the muddy beds of Nile, came forth. 

Polluting Egypt: gardens, fields, and plains, 

Were covered with the pest; the streets were filled; 

The croaking nuisance lurked in every nook; 830 

Nor palaces, nor even chambers, 'scaped; 

Aud the land stank — so numerous was the fry. 



THE WmTER WALK AT NOOK 

(The Task. Book VI.) 

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds. 
And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased 
With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave ; 
Some chord in unison with what we hear 
Is touched within us, and the heart replies. 5 

How soft the music of those village bells, 
Falling at intervals upon the ear 
In cadence sweet,, now dying ail aw^ay, 
Now pealing loud again, and louder still, 
Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on ! 10 

With easy force it opens all the cells 
Where Memory slept. Wherever I have heard 
A kindred melody, the scene recurs, 
And with it all its pleasures and its pains. 
Such comprehensive views the spirit takes, 15 

That in a few short moments I retrace 
(As in a map the voyager his course) 
The windings of my way through many years. 
Short as in retrospect the journey seems, 

6. Cowper, while wandering about in his favorite fields, could hear 
the bells of Oluey and of the neighboring village of Emberton. 



THE TASK. 39 

It seemed not always short ; tlic rugged path, 30 

Aud prospect of so dreary and forlorn, 

Moved many a sigh at its disheartening length. 

Yet feeling present evils, while the past 

Faintly impress the mind, or not at all, 

How readily we wish time spent revoked, 25 

That we might try the ground again where once 

(Through inexperience, as we now perceive). 

We missed that happiness we might have found ! 

Some friend is gone, perhaps his son's best friend, 

A father, whose authority, in show 30 

When most severe, and mustering all its force. 

Was but the graver countenance of love ; 

Whose favor, like the clouds of spring, might lower, 

And utter now aud then an awful vo'ce. 

But had a blessing in its darkest frown, 35 

Threatening at once and nourishing the plant. 

We loved, but not enough, the gentle hand 

That reared us. At a thoughtless age, allured 

By every gilded folly, we renounced 

His sheltering side, aud wilfully forewent 40 

That converse, which we now in vain regret. 

How gladly would the man recall to life 

The boy's neglected sire ! a mother too. 

That softer friend, perhaps more gladly still, 

Might he demand them at the gates of death. 45 

Sorrow has, since they went, subdued and tamed 

The playful humor ; he could now endure 

(Himself grown sober in the vale of tears), 

And feel a parent's presence no restraint, 

30, Compare '-Paradise Lost," X. 1094: 

" In whose look serene, 
"When an^ry most he seemed and most severe, 
What else but favor, grace, and mercy shone ?" 
30-50. In this passage Cowper seems to be thinking of his own pa- 
rents. His regard for his father was respect rather than love; his 
devoted love for his mother is most beautifully enshrinetl in the poem 
" On the Receipt of my Mothers Pictm'e."' 



40 TSB TASK. 

But not to understand a treasure's worth, 50 

Till time has stolen away the slighted good. 

Is cause of half the poverty we feel, 

And makes the world the wilderness it is. 

The few that pray at all pray oft amiss, 

And seeking grace too improve the prize they hold, 55 

Would urge a wiser suit than asking more. 

The night was winter in his roughest mood ; 
The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon 
Upon the southern side of the slant hills, 
And where the woods fence off the northern blast, 60 

The season smiles, resigning all its rage, 
And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue 
Without a cloud, and white without a speck 
The dazzling splendor of the scene below. 
Again the harmony comes o'er the vale, 65 

And through the trees I view the embattled tower 
Whence all the music. I again perceive 
The soothing influence of the wafted strains. 
And settle in soft musings as I tread 

The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms, 70 

Whose outspread branches overarch the glade. 
The roof, though movable through all its length 
As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed. 
And, intercepting in their silent fall 

The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me. 75 

Ko noise is here, or none that hinders thought. 
The redbreast warbles still, but is content 



50-^4. Cf. "All's Well that Ends Well/' V. 3:- 
" Our rash faults 
Make trivial price of what we have, 
Not knowing them until we know their grave." 
52. Poverty.— Spiritual poverty, isolation, want of friends. 
70. This walk, ''under oaks and elms," whence the battlemented 
tower of Emberton church is visible, is in the park, described in Book 
I., belonging to Mr. Throgmorton, the *' Benevolus " who " spares me 
yet These chestnuts ranged in corresponding lines." There are three 
of these noble avenues in the park, whose " obsolete prolixity of 
shade " is still carefully " reprieved " by the present owner. 



THI<] TASK. 41 

With slender notes, and more tlian lialf suppressed ; 

Pleased with bis solitude, and tlitlini^ light 

From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes 80 

From many a twig the pendant drops of ice, 

That tinkle in the withered leaves below. 

Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, 

Charms more than silence. Meditation here 

May think down hours to moments. Here the heart 85 

May give a useful lesson to the head, 

And learning wiser grow without his books. 

Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one, 

Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells 

In heads replete with thoughts of other men ; 90 

Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. 

Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass. 

The mere materials with which Wisdom builds. 

Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place, 

Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. 95 

Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much ; 

Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. 

Books are not seldom talismans and spells, 

By w^hich the magic art of shrewder wits 

Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled. 100 

Some to the fascination of a name 

Surrender judgment hoodwinked. Some the style 

Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds 

Of error leads them, by a tune entranced. 

While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear 105 

The insupportable fatigue of thought, 



100-104. Cf. Pope's " Essay on Criticism:"— 

*' What woful stuff this mad.ri,e:al would be, 
In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me ! 
But let a lord once own the happy lines, 
How the wit brightens! how the style refines I' 
And again: " Others for language all their care express. 

And value books, as women men, for dress; 
Their pi'aise is still— The style is excellent! 
The sense, they humbly take upon content." 



42 THE TASK. 

And swallowing therefore without pause or choice, 

The total grist unsifted, husks and all. 

But trees and rivulets, whose rapid course 

Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, 110 

And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs. 

And lanes in which the primrose ere her time 

Peeps through the moss, that clothes the hawthorn root, 

Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, 

Not shy, as in the world, and to be won 115 

By slow solicitation, seize at once 

The roving thought, and fix it on themselves. 

What prodigies can power divine perform 
More grand than it i^roduces year by year. 
And all in sight of inattentive man? 120 

Familiar with the effect, we slight the cause, 
And in the constancy of nature's course. 
The regular return of genial months, 
And renovation of a faded world, 

See naught to M'onder at. Should God again, 125 

As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race 
Of the undeviating and punctual sun, 
How would the world admire ! But speaks it less 
An agency divine, to make him know 
His moment when to sink, and when to rise, 130 

Age after age, than to arrest his course ? 
All we behold is miracle ; but seen 
So duly, all is miracle in vain. 
Where now the vital energy that moved, 
While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph 135 

Through the imperceptible meandering veins 
Of leaf and flower? It sleeps ; and the icy touch 
Of unprolific winter has impressed 



112. The primrose ere her time.— Milton's " rath primrose that 
forsaken dies," in '' Lycidas." 

126. Joshua x. 12-14. 

127. Compare Psahn civ. 19, 



THE TASK. 43 

A cold sta<^n;iti()ii on the iutestiue tide. 

But let the mouths go round, a few short months, 140 

And all shall be restored. These naked shoots, 

Barren as lances, among which the wind 

Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes. 

Shall put their graceful foliage on again, 

And more aspiring, and with ampler spread, 145 

Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost. 

Then each in its peculiar honors clad. 

Shall publish even to the distant eye. 

Its family and tribe. Laburnum, rich 

In streaming gold ; syringa, ivory pure ; 150 

The scentless and the scented rose, this red 

And of an humbler growth, the other tall ; 

And throwing up into the darkest gloom 

Of neighboring cypress, or more sable yew, 

Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf 155 

That the wind severs from the broken wave ; 

The lilac, various in array, now white, 

Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set 

With purple spikes pyramidal, as if 

Studious of ornament, yet unresolved 160 

Which hue she most approved, she chose them all ; 

Copious of flowers, the woodbine, pale and wan 

But well compensating her sickl}^ looks 

With never-cloying odors, early and late ; 

Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm 165 

Of flowers like flies clothing her slender rods, 

That scarce a leaf appears ; mezereon too, 

Though leafless, well-attired, and thick beset, 

With blushing wreaths, investing every spray ; 

Althaea with the purple eye ; the broom, 170 

139. Intestine.— Internal, inward; a questionable use of the word. 

153. The other.— ''The guelder rose.''— Co uj)er's note. 

165. Hypericum.— A. species of St. John's wort, 

167, Mezereon.— Spurge laurel. 

170. AlthsBa.— Probably the marsh-mallow is meant. 



44 th:^ task. 

Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloyed, 
Her blossoms ; and luxuriant above all 
The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, 
The deep dark green of whose unvarnished leaf 
Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more, 175 

The bright profusions of her scattered stars. — 
These have been, and these shall be, in their day; 
And all this uniform uncolored scene 
Shall be dismantled of its fleecy load 

And flush into variety again. 180 

From dearth to plenty, and from death to life. 
Is Nature's progress, when she lectures man 
In heavenly truth ; evincing, as she makes 
The grand transition, that there lives and works 
A soul in all things, and that soul is God. 185 

The beauties of the wilderness are his, 
That makes so gay the solitary place. 
Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms, 
That cultivation glories in, are his. 

He sets the bright procession on its way, 190 

And marshals all the order of the year ; 
He marks the bounds which winter may not pass, 
And blunts his pointed fury ; in its case, 
Russet and rude, folds up the tender germ, 
Uninjured, with inimitable art ; 195 

And ere one flowery season fades and dies. 
Designs the blooming wondt3rs of the next, 
****** 

Here unmolested, through whatever sign 
The sun proceeds, I wander. Neither mist, 
Nor freezing sky, nor sultry, checking me, 200 

Nor stranger, intermeddling with my joy. 



188. Compare Gray's "Elegy," St. 14:— 

" Full raariy a flower is born to blush unseen, 

And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 

198. Whatever sign.— Sign of the Zodiac. That is, in all seasons 



THE TASK. 43 

Even iu the spring and playtime of the 3'ear, 

That calls the unwonted villager abroad 

With all her little ones, a sportive train, 

To gather king-cups in the yellow mead, 205 

And prink their hair with daisies, or to pick 

A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook. 

These shades are all my own. The timorous hare. 

Grown so familiar with her frequent quest, 

Scarce shuns me ; and the stock-dove unalarmed 210 

Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends 

His long love -ditty for my near approach. 

Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm. 

That age or injury has hallowed deep 

Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves, 215 

He has outslept the winter, ventures forth 

To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun. 

The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play ; 

He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird, 219 

Ascends the neighboring beech ; there whisks his brush. 

And perks his ears, and stamps, and scolds aloud. 

With all the prettiness of feigned alarm, 

And auger insignificantly fierce. 

The heart is hard in nature and unfit 
For human fellowship, as being void 225 

Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike 
To love and friendship both, that is not pleased 
With sight of animals enjoying life, 
Nor feels their happiness augment his own. 
The bounding fawn, that darts across the glade, 230 

When none pursues, through mere delight of heart. 
And spirits buoyant with excess of glee ; 

205. Kingrciips.—Marsli -marigolds. 
224-229. Cowper says elsewhere: 

" I would not enter on my list of friends 

(Thoup;h grraced with polished manners and fine sense. 

Yet wanting^ sensibility ) the man 

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." 



46 THi; TASK. 

The horse as-wanton, and almost as fleet, 

That skims the spacious meadow at full speed, 

Then stops, and snorts, and throwing high his heels, 235 

Starts to the voluntary race again ; 

The very kine, that gambol at high noon, 

The total herd receiving first from one, 

That leads the dance, a summons to be gay. 

Though wild their strange vagaries, and uncouth 240 

Their efforts, yet resolved with one consent 

To give such act and utterance as they may 

To ecstasy too big to be suppressed — 

These, and a thousand images of bliss. 

With which kind Nature graces every scene, 245 

Where cruel man defeats not her design, 

Impart to the benevolent, wlio wish 

All that are capable of pleasure pleased, 

A far superior happiness to theirs. 

The comfort of a reasonable joy, 250 



ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES, 

FOR 

Classes In ^English Literature, Heading-, Grammar, etc. 

EDITED BY EMINENT ENGLISH ANO AMERICAN SCHOLARS. 

Each Volume contains a Sketch of the Author^s Life^ Prefatory and 

Explanatory J^otes, etc.y etc. 



i 



1 Byron's Prophecy of Dante. 

(Cantos I. and 11.) 

2 Milton's li'Allegro, and CJ A'en- 

seroso. 

3 liord Bacon's Essays, l;ivll and 

Moral. (Selected.; 

4 Byron's Prisoner of Chillon, 

5 Moore's Fire Worshippers. 

(Lalla Rookh. Selected.) 

6 Goldsmith's Deserted Village. 

7 Scott's Marmion. (Selections 

from Canto VI.) 

8 Scott's I^ay of the liast Minstrel. 

(Introduction and Canto I.) 

9 Burns'sCotter'sSaturday Night, 

and other Poems. 

10 Crabhe's The Village. 

11 Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. 

(Abridgment of Part I.) 
IS Macaulay's Essay on Banyan's 
Pilgrim's Progress. 

13 Macaulay's Armada, and other 

Poems. 

14 Shakespeare's Merchant of Ve- 

nice. (Selections from Acts I., 
in., and IV.) 

15 Goldsmith's Traveller. 

16 Hogg's Queen's. Wake, andKil- 

meny. 

17 Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 

18 Addison's Sir Boger de Cover- 

ley. 

19 Gray's Elegy in a Country 

Churchyard. 
30 Scott's Lady of the liake. (Canto 

21 Shakespeare's As You Like It, 

etc. (Selections.) 
83 Shakespeare's King John, and 

Richard II. (Selections.) 

23 Shakespeare's Henry IV., Hen- 
o. cJ'y/*^-'^®"^y VI* (Selections.) 

24 Shakespeare's Henry VIII., and 
„^ Julius Caesar. (Selections.) 

35 Wordsworth's Excursion. (Bk.I.) 

36 Pope's Essay on Criticism. 

37 Spenser's Faerie gueene. (Cantos 

I. and n.) 

38 Cowper's Task. (Book I.") 

39 Milton's Comus. 
30 Tennyson's Enoch Arden, The 

Lotus Eaters, Ulysses, and 
Titbonns. 



31 Irving*s Sketcb Book. (Selec- 
tions.) 

32 Dickens's Christmas CaroL 
(Condensed.) 

33 Carlyle's Hero as a Prophet. 

34 Macaulay's Warren Hastings. 
(Condensed.) 

35 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake- 
field. (Condensed.) 

36 Tennyson's The Two Voices, 
and a Dream of Fair Women* 

37 Memory Quotations. 

38 Cavalier Poets. 

39 Dryden's Alexander's Feast, 
and MacFleckuoe. 

40 Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes. 

41 Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hoi" 

l0T7. 

42 Lamb's Tales from Shake- 
speare. 

43 Le Kow's How to Teach Bead- 
ing. 

44 Webster's Bunker Hill Ora- 
tions. 

45 The Academy OrtholSpist. A 
Manual of Prontmciation. 

46 Milton's Lycidas, and Hymn 
on the Nativity. 

47 Bryant's Thana'topsis, and other 
Poems. 

48 Buskin's Modern Painters. 
(Selections.) 

49 The Shakespeare Speaker. 

50 Thackeray's Boundabout Pa- 
pers. 

61 Webster's Oration on Adams 
and Jefferson. 

52 Brown's Bab and His Friends. 

53 Morris's Life and Death of 
Jason. 

54 Burke's Speech on American 
Taxation. 

55 Pope's Rape of the Lock. 

56 Tennyson's Elaine. 

57 Tennyson's In Memoriam. 

58 Church's Story of the .^neid. 

59 Church's Story of the Iliad. 

60 Swift's Gulliver's Voyage to 
Lilliput. 

61 Macaulay's Essay on Lord Ba- 
con. (Condensed.) 

62 The Alcestis of Euripides. Eng- 
lish Version by Bev, Ri P®ft6(iir,M. A. 

(Additional numbers on next pmgisJI) 



English Classic Series— continued. 



63 The Antigone of SophocleM 

English Version by Thos. Franck- 
liii. D.D. 

64 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

(Selected Poems.) 

65 Robert Browning. (Selected 

Fqems.) 

66 Addison, The Spectator. (Sel'ns.) 

67 Scenes from George £liot's 

Adam Bede. 

68 Matthew Arnold's Culture and 

Anarchy. 

69 DeQuincey's Joan of Arc. 
TO Carlyle's Essay on Bums. 

71 Byron's Childe Harold's Pil- 
grimage. 

73 Poe's Raven, and other Poems. 

73 & 74 Macaulay's L.ord Clive. 
(Double Number.) 

75 "Webster's Reply to Hayne. 



76 & 77 Macaulay's Lays of A: 
cient Rome. (Double Numbe: 

78 American Patriotic Selection 

Declaration of Independenc 
Washington's Farewell A 
dress, Lincoln's Oettyshu) 
Speech, etc. 

79 & 80 Scott's Lady of the Lak 

(Condensed.) 
81 & 83 Scott's Marmion. (Co 

densed.) 
83 & 84 Pope's Essay on Man. 

85 Shelley's Skylark, Adonais, ai 

other Poems. 

86 Dickens's Cricket on tJ 

Hearth. (In preparation.) 

87 Spencer's Philosophy of Styl 

(In preparation.) 

88 Lamh's Essays of Ella. ( 

preparation.) 



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